In a world full of JRPGs, tERRORbane – with its obvious emphasis on the word “error” – is a recently announced retro-styled adventure game that is heavily inspired by classic JRPGs, but adds a cynical and self-aware twist in which you, the player, takes on the developer of the game himself (who severely lacks self-awareness) as he attempts to create the perfect video game. Developed by indie studio BitNine studios, the tERRORbane demo features a humorous, fourth-wall-breaking look at grandiose game development and how the NPCs themselves might be impacted throughout the process.
Upon starting the game, you’re thrown straight into the fire, so to speak, being greeted with a “blue screen of death” that most PC users have encountered at some point in their life. A CMD screen pops up, which the developer of the game uses as a chatbox, effectively introducing you to the person responsible for this game (or lack thereof). The developer talks to you directly and tasks you with playing the game while uncovering and recording any bugs you might encounter along the way. And you will find bugs. Lots of them. Therein lies the overall point of tERRORbane: making your way through this glitchy, bug-riddled game and helping to create the perfect game despite the developer not exactly helping you.
These funny moments extend to the characters themselves, with villains not being able to comprehend the player character’s power, NPCs being forbidden to spoil anything (a request that comes directly from the developer, and some oddly-designed guy named George who has no idea what he’s doing or what his purpose actually is. As with everything else, almost all of the characters play into the game’s meta-commenting, and somehow, it all manages to work.
Gameplay consists of you exploring different levels, almost all of which have some sort of issue. For instance, while exploring a room, the player character might stay in one spot on the screen while moving, but instead of them moving around the room, it’s the room that moves around them. Figuring out some of the buggy puzzles can be tricky, but they certainly aren’t overly complex. These are mostly “WTF” type of moments, but I couldn’t help but chuckle and shake my head once I figured out what I needed to do to progress.
You’ll also have combat encounters that are all over the place in terms of strategy. The rock enemy that I encountered – a literal rock – admittedly threw me for a loop until I figured out the rather simple strategy that I needed to use to defeat it. Yet another moment where I laughed and shook my head at the simple, yet effective humor in tERRORbane.
I fully enjoyed my time in tERRORbane and am very interested to see how the full game plays out. With his overall attitude and grandiose nature, I could see myself potentially getting annoyed with interacting with the developer throughout the game, but I think that’s kind of the point. Thus far, though, tERRORbane hasn’t given me any reason not to look forward to the full release, which is slated to launch in Q3 2021.
A PC copy of tERRORbane was provided to TheGamer for this preview. A demo for tERRORbane is available now on Steam.
